Even 12 months ago, an Intel Nehalem-powered gaming PC with 6 GB of system memory was considered high-end. Now there's already talk of a graphics card taking shape, that has that much memory. On Thursday this week, AMD launched its Radeon HD 7970 graphics card, which features its newest 28 nm "Tahiti" GPU, and 3 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 384-bit wide memory interface. All along, it had plans of making a dual-GPU graphics card that made use of two of these GPUs to give you a Crossfire-on-a-stick solution. AMD codenamed this product "New Zealand". We are now getting to learn that codename "New Zealand" will carry the intuitive-sounding market name Radeon HD 7990, and that it is headed for a Q1 2012 launch.

This means that Radeon HD 7990 should arrive before April 2012. Tests show that Tahiti has superior energy-efficiency compared to previous-generation "Cayman" GPU, even as it has increased performance. From a technical standpoint, a graphics card featuring two of these Tahiti GPUs, running with specifications matching those of the single-GPU HD 7970, looks workable. Hence, there is talk of 6 GB of total graphics memory (3 GB per GPU system).

One can also expect the fruition of AMD's new ZeroCore technology. This technology powers down the GPU to zero draw when the monitor is blanked (idling), but in CrossFire setups, this technology completely powers down other GPUs than the primary one to zero state, when the system is not running graphics-heavy applications. This means that the idle, desktop, and Blu-ray playback power-draw of the HD 7990 will be nearly equal to that of the HD 7970, which is already impressive.

Even 12 months ago, an Intel Nehalem-powered gaming PC with 6 GB of system memory was considered high-end. Now there's already talk of a graphics card taking shape, that has that much memory. On Thursday this week, AMD launched its Radeon HD 7970 graphics card, which features its newest 28 nm "Tahiti" GPU, and 3 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 384-bit wide memory interface. All along, it had plans of making a dual-GPU graphics card that made use of two of these GPUs to give you a Crossfire-on-a-stick solution. AMD codenamed this product "New Zealand". We are now getting to learn that codename "New Zealand" will carry the intuitive-sounding market name Radeon HD 7990, and that it is headed for a Q1 2012 launch.

This means that Radeon HD 7990 should arrive before April 2012. Tests show that Tahiti has superior energy-efficiency compared to previous-generation "Cayman" GPU, even as it has increased performance. From a technical standpoint, a graphics card featuring two of these Tahiti GPUs, running with specifications matching those of the single-GPU HD 7970, looks workable. Hence, there is talk of 6 GB of total graphics memory (3 GB per GPU system).

One can also expect the fruition of AMD's new ZeroCore technology. This technology powers down the GPU to zero draw when the monitor is blanked (idling), but in CrossFire setups, this technology completely powers down other GPUs than the primary one to zero state, when the system is not running graphics-heavy applications. This means that the idle, desktop, and Blu-ray playback power-draw of the HD 7990 will be nearly equal to that of the HD 7970, which is already impressive.

People complaining over 6GB thing. Please read the news again. It doesn't say anywhere that the cards have 6GB of VRAM. It just says that system with 6GB of RAM (regular system RAM that is!) was considered as high end till recently.
However it does say that it comes with 3GB of GDDR5 VRAM memory.

people complaining over 6gb thing. Please read the news again. It doesn't say anywhere that the cards have 6gb of vram. It just says that system with 6gb of ram (regular system ram that is!) was considered as high end till recently.
However it does say that it comes with 3gb of gddr5 vram memory.

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...from a technical standpoint, a graphics card featuring two of these tahiti gpus, running with specifications matching those of the single-gpu hd 7970, looks workable. Hence, there is talk of 6 gb of total graphics memory (3 gb per gpu system).

At 5040x1050 many games use between 1.5GB and 1.8GB, the highest i have seen is 2 GB in aliens vs predator but my 6970 runs out of GPU power so i think at a res higher than 5040x1050 with a 7990 the 3 GB per GPU could really be put to use.